Ep #348: The Referral Must Knows (Part 2)

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there, and welcome to the Roadmap to Referrals podcast, a show that proves you can generate referrals without asking or manipulation.

I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall. I’m a card-carrying member of the Business Failure Club, have taught my referrals without asking methodology and strategies to clients in more than 14 countries, and my mission is to help you unleash a referral explosion by leveraging the science of referrals and respecting your relationships.

Welcome back to part two of the referral must-knows. These are the things that we’re talking about right now, but these are the things that I just really need you to understand. They are critical and crucial to you understanding how best to generate referrals in your business.

They’re the foundational pieces that some other folks may not be willing to tell you. So I am making sure that you know them because they are the must-knows.

Now, we are doing this in an effort to help you fall back in love or fall in love for the first time with the idea that referrals can be your reality in your business.

I know it’s February, talking about anything from a love perspective is such a cliche with our made-up holiday of Valentine’s Day, but I truly want you to love running your business. I know I love mine, and that wasn’t always the case in the past.

And so I know it can be a journey to building a business, structuring a business, having the right model with your business, and figuring out the business development piece of your business to have a strong pipeline of potential people who may want to give you money.

All of that takes time, it takes the right strategies, and it also takes the right mindset. But when it’s right, oh, it is lovely. And I want that for you.

Which is why I decided to dedicate February to falling in love with referrals. Because I know if referrals is working within your business, you have a better chance of loving what could sometimes be an unlovable part of your business.

If you have clients coming in the door, potential clients who have been referred to you coming in the door, I know things in your business are going to be great. So there’s just some things you gotta know.

Now, we did part one last week with episode 347, and we will link to that in the show notes for this episode. But I want to build on that. I’m not going to rehash or tell you what we talked about last week.

You’re going to have to go listen to episode 347 when you have time. You can certainly listen to these episodes out of order or in any order, so it’s totally fine.

So if you’re starting with me today and you haven’t really caught up on any of the previous episodes that have been released this year, go ahead and listen to this one and then make sure you go back and listen to the one last week’s.

Because there are so many things I need you to know about referrals, I wasn’t going to cram them all into one episode. I mean, it would be like the longest episode probably I’ve ever done.

And like I said last week, I’m going to miss some things. Let’s be honest, not everything that I want you to know and understand about referrals is actually going to fit into the next couple of episodes that we’re talking about over the month of February.

But these are the biggies. These are the ones I need you to know. They are the must-knows, most definitely. And then, of course, as we move into March, we’re going to start talking about the must-dos.

So we’re talking about the must-knows now, and then we’re going to move into talking about the must-dos. Okay, so let’s move into part two of things you must know about referrals, and I have four for you for this episode.

So the first one I want you to understand is my philosophy. I’ve talked about this in the past, where I truly believe that when you make the decision to learn from someone, to learn from an expert, to hire someone to guide you in something you don’t know how to do or don’t understand or need help doing, and in some cases, just you know what to do, but you need someone to bless it that it is the right thing to do.

When you make the decision to hire another service provider to provide guidance, expertise, advice to you, you really need to be in sync with them on their philosophy. Because their philosophy is going to inform everything they tell you to do.

It will be the undercurrent throughout their advice, their strategies, their tactics, their language, their objective, and even, in some cases, the underlying motive of everything they teach you to do. It’s going to be based on what they believe. And that, my friend, is their philosophy.

So, if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re thinking, one day I think I’m going to actually hire Stacey and I’m going to work with her and I’m going to learn all the things she doesn’t tell me on this podcast or in her books, then you need to know where I stand and what I believe in my philosophy.

And I have two that are really the undercurrents to how I teach referrals. And they are the baseline, the foundation, I don’t even know the right word I’m trying to come up with right here, but they really are at the heart and soul.

These philosophies, these two philosophies are really at the heart and soul of everything I believe about referrals, why I teach referrals the way that I teach it, the without asking, without manipulation, without incentivizing.

It’s at the heart and soul of everything I believe about referrals and exactly how I teach them come from these two philosophies. So number one is this.

I believe that you should not have to compromise who you are or your relationships to grow your business and receive referrals.

Let me say that again, just for those in the back of the room who may have multitasked right in the middle of me saying that. You need to hear this, so come back to me for a second.

I believe that you should not have to compromise who you are or your relationships to grow your business and generate and receive more referrals. This is a biggie for me.

I think most of the things I hate about the other tactics that are taught about referrals are because they ask me to behave in a way that doesn’t feel aligned with who I actually am.

When you ask me to do something and my gut just screams, oh, absolutely not. I’m not doing that. That’s terrible. I know that that’s not something that I want to do, will do, and if I even do it for like a nanosecond, it won’t be something that I continue to do. And I believe in showing up in a way that feels authentic.

Now, here’s the other thing. It’s gotta work too. Like, it doesn’t mean like, well, this feels really good, but it’s producing no results. Well, that’s not good either.

Like, I mean, I’m a pragmatist at the same time. I’m a realist. Like, it’s gotta feel good and it has to work. But that is possible when it comes to referrals.

Most of the tactics out there ask you to do something where you feel like you’re compromising yourself or you feel like you’re compromising the people that you ultimately want referrals from, which means you’re compromising your relationships. You’re taking advantage of them.

And I just don’t want to do, I don’t want to spend my days taking advantage or feeling like I’m taking advantage of other people or compromising my relationships or myself.

And so that is a fundamental principle of everything that I do, like all the strategies, all the tactics, all the language, everything I teach comes from that place.

And I always tell my clients, I am most interested in how the person you’re saying this to or writing this to, or communicating this to, I am more interested on how they will react as the receiver than I am about how you will feel delivering it.

But I know that if we are paying attention to how the receiver will feel when they receive whatever that language is communicated in whatever delivery mechanism you’re communicating it in, I know if we are cognizant and authentic and intentional about that language, that messaging, then I know it’s going to make you feel good, because it’s going to make them feel good.

And so everything I do comes from that. It’s not about you doing it or saying it. It’s about how the receiver is going to feel receiving it. And if they feel good, trust me, you’ll feel good doing it.

And so that is the first philosophy of mine you need to understand. And that is my underlying belief of how I teach referrals, why I teach my referrals without asking framework and methodology, and a big part of everything, of course, that I do.

The second philosophy that I operate from is a little bit more tactical to how referrals happen. And that second philosophy is, is referrals come from relationships, and relationships have to be maintained. Pretty much that simple.

You cannot ghost somebody for a year or two years or even nine months and just think they’re just going to keep referring you with no communication from you. It’s just not going to happen.

So you need to identify the right relationships and then you need to be willing to maintain, stay connected to those right relationships. So those are my two parts of my philosophy that I believe.

So when you learn from me, whether it’s just listening to this podcast week after week, reading my book, or my second book when it comes out in the fall of 2025, or getting on a webinar with me, or watching me speak on stage, or joining me for a virtual presentation, whatever it is, whatever it is, know that everything I say, do, believe, speak, and teach comes from those two philosophies.

Okay, the next thing I wanna make sure that we talk about is what has to exist for referrals to happen.

So in last week’s episode, we talked about the definition of referrals. For this, I wanna build on that a little bit and talk about what must exist for referrals to happen and which of those you actually control.

For a referral to happen, one that is not manufactured or artificially created because you begged somebody or demanded that somebody give you a referral, one that exists naturally, it’s gonna have two things, desire and opportunity.

And the next big question I always hear from folks is, well, which do I control? Or you should be asking, which do I control? And the truth is, everybody wants to control both.

And most people actually think you control opportunity, but you don’t. You control desire. So let me break down these two things that must exist, opportunity and desire, and then we’ll talk about why you only control desire and not opportunity.

So desire is the want, right? The willingness to refer to you. It’s creating the desire in a referral source of yours to have you be the person they choose to refer to.

Let’s be honest, if you’re listening to this podcast, more than likely you’re not the only person who does what you do in your town or city. There’s no way you’re the only financial advisor in your town or city.

Or attorney, or interior designer, or marketing consultant, or leadership and business coach. There’s no way you’re the only one who does that in your area.

And if you operate outside of a local area and you operate maybe on a state level or a regional level or a national level or an international level, well then, your competition just quadrupled tenfold.

So it’s understanding that why do I choose to refer to you when there are other people who do what you do and are probably good at it too? I mean, obviously there’s some folks who aren’t great at what you do that do the same thing. But a lot of times, they’re good too.

And so why you? Why do I decide to refer to you? Most people think it’s because, well, I’m the best at what I do. Except for most of your referral sources have no idea how to determine what is the best. They don’t know. They have no idea.

Unless they’re actually a client who’s worked with you and has worked with somebody else and you are clearly better than that other person they worked with, they still don’t know that you’re the best of the best of the best.

What we know is that we enjoy working with you. But that’s on a client side. How does a center of influence know that you’re the best? We kind of assume everybody is the best.

Ultimately, that’s what we’re looking at here. We kind of assume that people are good at what they do. We assume if they’re not good at what they do, they probably wouldn’t stay in business very long.

There is a reason why a lot of small businesses fail, like 80-something percent fail within the first five years. Of course, it’s not all because they’re not great at what they do. There’s a lot of reasons for business failure.

My first business failed after four years, and I was really good at what I did. I didn’t figure out the whole business development, business ownership piece. That took a little bit more time. But my point is, why do they choose to refer to you? And that is the desire.

And that desire is the relationship that you build and maintain and nurture and cultivate with people you want to refer you and with people who are already referring you. So that’s desire. That’s the I pick you over any of your competitors.

The second thing that has to exist for referrals to be true is opportunity. I actually need to come across people that I can refer to you. Now, for some folks, I may only come across one person in a year that I can refer to you.

In other cases, I may come across lots of people that I can refer to you. More than likely, that’s because someone is a center of influence to you, right? They know what you do, they don’t do what you do, so there’s no competitive overlap, and they come across your ideal client with some level of regularity, just based on what they do.

They come across your ideal client. Sometimes it’s because they’re super well-connected. Other times it’s because they’re having conversations with your clients about the problems you solve before you are. And so it’s really understanding and identifying that opportunity must exist.

Now, if someone’s teaching you to ask for referrals, they are teaching you to manufacture or artificially create that opportunity.

I read or see a lot from other people where they talk about what it looks like to ultimately generate referrals. And they’re like, I got 200 referrals because I asked people to give them to me.

And then if you really dig into that data, you’re like, okay, so how many of those actually were ideal that were not created on the spot because you demanded that person give you a referral? And so at the end of the day, it was just that, right? It was like, I’m just giving you a name to make you go away or to satisfy this request you’ve made of me.

But there’s actually, that’s not really who has any want to talk to you. So you’ve got to pay attention to opportunity. Do they come across the opportunity to refer to you? And of course, you control desire. You don’t control opportunity.

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there, pardon the interruption. I would love the opportunity to show you exactly how I can help take you from where you are in your business with referrals and show you exactly how we can double, triple, or quadruple your referrals.

We do that every single week inside the Building a Referable Business coaching program. It is a 12-month coaching program where you get to take a measured approach, go at your pace, customized based on what you need to be implementing at the right time in the right order, and have weekly access to me as well.

I would love for you to consider completing an application and letting me review it to see if I can help you double, triple, or quadruple your referrals this year.

To complete an application and learn more about the Building a Referable Business Coaching Program, please go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/referable. That’s StaceyBrownRandall.com/referable. Now back to the episode.

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay, so we’ve talked about the two parts of my philosophy. And we’ve talked about what must exist for a referral to be true and which of those two, meaning only one of them, you actually control.

Now I want to talk about what’s unspoken in referrals. And I never hear anyone talking about this. And it’s really, really important for you to understand it. And here’s the unspoken in referrals.

When a referral source refers to you, they really want it to be their idea. They want it to be in that moment that they are talking to someone who has a problem, for them to be like, oh my gosh, I know how to solve this problem, and how we’re gonna solve it is I’m gonna refer you over to, insert your name, right?

You’re just the solution provider when you are referred. It’s not about you. And so referral sources want it to be their idea. They get a rush from helping somebody by connecting them with someone else.

And then, in fact, they get a rush because now they’ve helped two people. They’ve helped the person who has a problem, and they’ve helped the business who gets to make money when they help that person solve their problem.

Now, you are not at the forefront of the thought process. You need to know your place. You are the last piece of the puzzle when a referral is being made. But you are helped, right? But the truth is they start by wanting to help the person who has a problem who is the prospect they’re going to ultimately refer to you.

And that unspoken rule in referrals, that a referral source will never be able to articulate to you, because it’s really happening in the subconscious, is that idea that they want it to be their idea to refer to you.

They don’t want you to tell them. They certainly don’t want you to be asking every single time they see you. They’re going to start hiding from you. And they don’t need to be barraged over the head with every single newsletter you send out the door saying, hey, don’t forget to refer me.

And they don’t need to be seeing it every single time in any of your communications over and over and over again, that asking, it’s ridiculous, right? And so it’s just an unspoken in referrals.

They really want it to be their idea. They get the rush that happens within their brain of the feel-good chemicals being released called the happiness trifecta when they do something that feels good and helping someone else feels good.

Okay, so this unspoken rule in referral actually brings us into the science of referrals. And we have talked about the science of referrals before on this podcast. So I am gonna give you, I mean, what I would kind of refer to as probably like the high-level version.

I will strongly encourage you to go to my website. You can actually download a video where I talk about the science of referrals. You can get that basically, I think it’s like on any page on the website.

You just have to go and look down and like, scroll down, not look down, scroll down. And it’ll say it’s like a seven-minute science video. If you want to watch a video of me breaking down the science, I’m going to give you a high-level overview right now.

So there is a video you can go watch that is available off my website. You can access it from there. Just put your name and your email. It’ll send you a link to be able to watch that video. We also talk about it on the podcast in a couple of different times.

But the one episode that we really dedicate to it is actually episode 311. So we’ll link to that in the show notes page for this episode as well. But that is episode 311.

So you can definitely check that out too. But let me give you this kind of like that high-level overview of what it looks like from a science-based perspective. And this is what I teach.

Three things, three major things I need you to know and understand. Again, I’m gonna do a high-level overview. Please go watch the video or go listen to episode 311 to get the nitty gritty.

High-level overview, number one, is what’s happening in the brain of the referral source when they make the decision to refer you. And that is, as I said, the happiness trifecta that lights up where the feel-good chemicals like dopamine and its two cousins, chemical cousins, are released.

And it’s called the happiness trifecta. That is not my terminology. That is what the smart scientists came up with. And it’s called the happiness trifecta. Those chemicals are released, and it happens when you do something that feels good.

It obviously regulates moods. The happiness trifecta does a number of things. But one of the things it does do, those chemicals are released when you do something that feels good.

That’s what’s happening in the brain when your referral source is talking to someone else and discovers they have a problem, and they can refer them to you to help them fix their problem.

Again, know your place. You’re the final piece of the puzzle. You’re not the most important. You’re actually the third most important.

And you’re third, which is actually, there’s only three, but you’re still important. And that is you being the service provider, the solution provider. You’re the one who’s going to solve the problem.

But in the moment that a referral is happening, before it ever gets to you, that referral source is trying to help someone who has a problem. And how they’re going to help that problem, of course, is by referring that person to you.

So again, know your place. Understand this is stuff happening in the brain of your referral source, which is why a lot of the strategies that I teach are to keep that feel-good feeling alive with your referral source.

Which is why I am so adamant about handwritten notes being written after someone refers to you. Because I want to keep the feel-good feeling alive and the best way to do that is in a handwritten note, not a text or an email. Okay. So that’s the first part of the science.

The second piece of the science, of course, is the one most people know when it comes to referrals, and that’s the psychology of trust, right? It’s that psychology of trust of understanding and knowing and recognizing that if people don’t trust you, they’re never going to refer to you.

It’s that know, like, and trust factor. The same things that happen in the buyer’s journey sales continuum, know, like, and trust. Same thing that happens with referrals. They have to trust you to be able to refer to you.

But how you maintain that trust is not about making sure they know that you are an amazing attorney or an amazing CPA or bookkeeper or an amazing architect. It’s not about knowing that you’re amazing. They actually assume you are until you prove them otherwise.

What it really comes down to, that psychology of trust and that trust being maintained, comes down to the relationship you’re building with them. That’s how you maintain trust. And that leads us into the third part of understanding the science behind referrals.

And that is the idea of how we then use science to build out our strategies that keep that happiness trifecta feeling alive, that helping feeling alive, that hero feeling alive, and maintain your trust by continuing to invest in those relationships.

We do that through behavioral economics. Then we use the positive parts of behavioral economics.

I mean, there are definitely some people who use behavioral economics for evil, but it’s using that behavioral economics for good and how we are using the different tenets of behavioral economics in how we’re developing and cultivating and maintaining those relationships.

The what we’re doing. And that comes down to understanding behavioral economics. So again, please go listen to episode 311 if you want a deeper dive on this, or you can go watch a quick video where I break down these three parts of the science.

You can access that video on my website. Truly, just go to StaceyBrownRandall.com, scroll down to the bottom, just above the footer, and you’ll see where you can put in your name and your email and get access to that video.

Alright. So those are the four things that I wanted you to know in part two of the must knows about referrals.

It is my philosophy, two parts of my philosophy, what must exist and which of those two you control, the unspoken in referrals, and the three parts of the science. High level. Okay.

Of course, you can find the links to the other episodes that I mentioned can be found in the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/348. That’s for episode 348. Oh my gosh, we’re so close to 350 episodes. It’s kind of blowing my mind. Can’t wait.

Okay, my friends, we are back with another great episode next week created with you and your needs in mind. Until then, you know what to do. Take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.